


Four Years

by gammacorvi



Category: Without a Trace
Genre: Abduction, Abuse, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-15
Updated: 2005-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-27 03:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gammacorvi/pseuds/gammacorvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam vanishes without a trace. Jack goes to pieces trying to find her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Years

He has almost lost her twice. The memories are hovering near the surface while he is staring down into the cup filled with cold coffee. It is still full.

He has tried to keep the panic down all day, managing to be outwardly calm and professional – as always. But something inside him is starting to slide.

They have found nothing. There are no leads to go on. Nobody has seen anything. Vivien, Danny and Martin are still conducting interviews, but Jack can feel deep inside that it is a waste of time. This is a bad one.

One of the good things about his work is that people actually turn up again some of the time. He likes to get them back unharmed. He even likes the annoying ones who come back from trips they have not told anyone about, wide-eyed and flabbergasted by all the commotion they have caused. The relief he feels at those times is sweet. But this is a bad one. He can tell. Something has happened to her.

He lifts his face, gazing at Sam's photograph mounted on the white board with the horizontal red line. Her blond hair is tied back in a ponytail and she is wearing a blue blouse. She looks beautiful. He remembers it is the same photo he showed a drug dealer not so long ago. Someone they suspected had a hand in her abduction while she was undercover on a case. He and Martin got to her in time – barely.

Jack can feel his hands beginning to shake. He takes a couple of deep breaths to calm himself.

He has hurt her plenty in the years they have known each other. He has not meant to. You never mean to hurt what you love most. And still it happens. He has been unable to prevent that. The choices that he made for his family – good choices he still thinks – have nevertheless caused her a lot of grief… and, yeah… him, too.

Never mind. That is in the past.

Once when things turned really ugly he was there for her. She was held hostage in a bookstore, the "Table of Contents", critically wounded by a gunshot in the leg. Jack remembers talking to another hostage he had negotiated out of there moments before. The man told him:

"She's bleeding all over the place. She's gonna die in there."

Jack almost lost it in that moment. There was but one thought in his head – to get her out of there even if it meant to give up his life.

He tries to turn his mind away from the memories. They hurt too much.

Jack knows he is responsible for what happened to her. He is her boss. If he had made different choices, given different orders, she would have been perfectly safe.

She called in sick yesterday. Today she did not turn up for work. He was instantly concerned, feeling a deep uneasiness inside. He called her but she did not take the phone. He remembers Vivien smiling at him, telling him she would be there shortly.

She was not.

Fifteen minutes later they were standing at her front door. No one opened. Jack decided to break down the door. His leg still hurts from the impact. But she was not there. The apartment was tidy and peaceful. And Jack had known instantly that something was horribly wrong.

Jack puts the coffee down. He lowers his head into his hands. His mind is churning out possible scenarios. They have called her mother, spoken to her friends, interviewed the neighbors, even the man who owns the grocery store where she likes to shop. He has turned every conversation he has had with her in the last couple of days over and over in his mind. Nothing.

The phone rings. It is Danny. His voice is slightly choked. He knows he is the bearer of bad news. They _have_ found something. In Central Park. It looks like a black coat and a pair of black shoes. Jack wills his mind to turn to a blank. It can be anyone's coat, anyone's pair of shoes. He raises his head. Through the glass-partitioning he can see Martin come down the corridor. Martin catches the look on his face and stops, eyes widening in concern. His affair with Sam has been over for some time now and Jack knows that he has a new girlfriend. He also suspects that Sam is not really over him. She seems sad at times and Martin is sweet and considerate toward her. Jack has held himself back. So much has been going on in his life. He is bruised, he still sleeps badly and he feels almost numb. It got even worse after the deposition. Jack will never tell anyone, but he has started to feel inferior, to feel like a failure. The guilt he carries around is worsening all the time. He has hoped for a long time in a secret part of his heart that maybe he and Sam still have a chance. But he is beginning to give up on it. It is not happening.

And now she is gone.

 

ooo

Jack approaches the bundle of black cloth wearily. It has been raining and the coat looks soaked. Two black boots are nearby. One of the heels is broken. Everything has already been photographed and a crime scene investigator is approaching with an evidence bag. Jack touches the coat. He picks it up, unfolding it, planning to search through the pockets. His hands come away wet with rain and blood.

"Jack," Vivien says. Her voice is right beside him, her steadying hand on his arm.

The color has drained from his face. He stands frozen.

He will never know how he managed to get through the rest of the day. He is functioning but he feels like an automaton, doing what he knows has to be done. Most clearly he remembers Vivien's concerned face, looking at him. She is staying right there at his side all the rest of the nightmarish day and the following night.

Soon it is confirmed that the DNA of the blood matches Sam's. But that is the only thing they turn up for a long time.

 

ooo

_Sam lies in a dark place. She is cold, miserable and hurt. The memories of what happened to her are sketchy. She knows she has been attacked and abducted not far from her home. She tries to remember what she had been doing, what time of day it was, but she is not able to. Her hand comes away wet and sticky when she touches her hurting head. She knows it is blood. The dizziness comes and goes and sitting up makes her nauseous, so she is just lying there on that cold, hard floor._

_Scared and helpless as she is her mind keeps coming back to one thought:_

_Did I manage to push the flower from the windowsill? Jack will know when he sees the flower is gone._

_Part of the time she realizes that happened months ago, then again it seems absolutely real. And while she is drifting in and out of reality, she is always keeping the thought of Jack in her mind. She can see him clearly behind her closed lids. People might not call him handsome but to her he has always been beautiful. She takes pleasure in every trait of his personality. She desires him. She has done so from the first time she laid eyes on him. But she also discovered soon enough that the attraction goes far deeper. They work well together. They have an instinctive knowledge of what the other one is going for and hinting at. They enjoy the understanding, the glances, the jokes that pass between them._

_Sometimes we still have that, she thinks. Sometimes we still look at each other that way._

_She remembers the first dawning realization that it is over between them. It is when he tells her that he actually moved out, left his wife – three months ago! Sam is so hurt, she can hardly speak. She does not understand why he did not tell her, why he did not confide in her. Months later when she is in hospital after being shot, after he has saved her life by risking his, he visits her. He is moving back in with his family he tells her. He has made his choices. The pain she feels is intense and for a long time she tries to pretend that she has never really been in love with him. She even tries to fall in love with Martin. Poor Martin. He sure deserved something better than that._

_Her mind wanders to the "Table of Contents". She hears Jack's voice again, booming across the empty street:_

" _I want Samantha!"_

_He is unstoppable. He is coming in and he is so absolutely convincingly sure of himself that no one can stop him._

_Sam is terrified. He is sacrificing himself for her and cold fear grips her. The hours she spends in the hospital not knowing what is happening, not knowing if he is safe are the worst, most unbearable moments in her life._

_After a while a door opens and light floods the room. Before her eyes can adjust a blindfold is put around them. She tries to struggle but her hands get tied behind her back. The nausea is coming back in waves and she tries desperately not to throw up. When her stomach settles down again she talks to her captor but there is no reaction. He washes some of the blood from her face and she can feel the stinging of a disinfectant in the wound. Then she is left alone again. She is horribly uncomfortable, trying to find a position she can rest in but failing._

_She thinks about Jack. That makes everything bearable._

_Sam feels clearly in that moment that she has lied to herself for too long – she does love him and part of her will always love him no matter what the future brings._

ooo

There are only two things that keep Jack going in the long succession of days that follow. One of them is the thought of his daughters. He knows that they need him and he forces himself to find the time to fly to Chicago and be with them for at least a couple of hours - dragging himself away from his work, from a case that has no leads to go on and is growing colder by the minute and from the constant fear that Sam is gone forever. Those hours he spends with Kate and Hanna are precious. Both pick up on the state he is in and treat him with a tenderness he has not been used to in a long time.

The other thing that keeps him going is the resolve never to give up on Sam. He will never stop looking for her.

Never.

 

ooo

_Three months later_

Vivien is concerned. They all are. It is hard to watch what is happening to him. He is aging rapidly, his face gray, reflecting much more clearly than he knows the state he is in.

Vivien is not surprised that he takes it that hard. She has known him for a long time and he is that kind of man. She is glad that he has no reason to feel guilty about Sam's disappearance. She is not sure he would survive that.

But apart from that there are other problems to deal with. As hard as it is, but life is moving on, even without Sam. Vivien's health could be better. She has a hard time accepting that she can’t really depend on her body any more. She feels a kind of betrayal.

Martin is having problems with his new girlfriend. He loves her but his worry about Sam is taking a toll on the new relationship. The girlfriend is aware that there are still feelings for Sam under the surface and now she suddenly wants to marry! Martin, needless to say, is not ready for that. Danny on the other side has surprisingly enough suddenly produced a girlfriend. It is the crime scene investigator he met when they found Sam's coat and boots in Central Park. Now marriage is the uppermost thought in his mind. His girlfriend, though, is reluctant. She thinks, rightly so, that thinking of marriage is _his_ reaction of dealing with the stress and grief of losing a good friend and colleague.

To make bad things worse they have a new member in the team. It’s a young agent named Agatha Brown. She is a totally different type than Sam, which is good. On the other side she has taken an almost instant dislike to Jack. That does not help much.

Vivien raises her head. Jack is leaning on the partitioning between the desks, looking at her with concern.

"Are you all right?" he asks.

"Just a little tired," she answers, taking the papers that he is offering her.

Vivien longs to see him smile again. He has never smiled much in the years that she has known him, but she _has_ seen him happy occasionally. As a general rule these occasions either involved his daughters or Sam. She remembers how his smile can lighten up the room.

And she thinks that Agatha would like a smiling Jack much better. She only knows him as the disgruntled, bad-humored old agent that she has met on her first day. Vivien has tried to explain, but Agatha, the brilliant only child of a wealthy family, fresh out of the academy and not really familiar with the concept of strong emotion or even love, does not understand.

"I mean, come on, he should pull himself together," she tells Vivien innocently, "Life does go on after all."

Vivien had to fight down a sharp reply. It would certainly be easier for all involved if Jack would "pull himself together" and go on – but then he would not be Jack. He would be colder and less caring and certainly not as successful in his job.

The phone rings. Agatha answers it, saying "Yes" a couple of times, writing something down on a slip of paper. She then goes to see Jack. When she returns she tells the others:

"It looks as if the search for Samantha Spade is over. That was the coroner's office. They found a body yesterday, pretty decomposed. Probably her, they say. They want Agent Malone to have a look."

Vivien, Martin and Danny stare at her in shock. Agatha, becoming aware of her insensitivity mumbles:

"I'm truly sorry."

"I don't believe that!" Martin blurts out and Agatha, not understanding what he is referring to looks guilty.

Vivien rises, glancing across the bullpen to Jack's office. He is signaling her, wanting her to go with him. He looks okay. There is a stern, professional look on his face but Vivien sees the darkness in his eyes and knows it is a mask. He does not utter a word while they ride down in the elevator. When they get to the car, he merely states:

"You're driving."

The words sound squashed.

The whole ride he stares blindly out of the window, not noticing the bustle on the streets.

The morgue is cold and uninviting as usual.

He forces himself to keep his eyes open and focused when the cloth is pulled back, revealing the face of the victim. He looks closely, wanting to make sure and a relief floods him that is so great he can feel tears spring from his eyes.

Vivien is grabbing his arm.

"Jack, I don't think it is her."

"No," he says, wiping the tears away.

Later he feels almost guilty about his reaction. That girl, too, was someone's daughter, someone's friend and maybe someone's wife and someone's mother. She was loved. And now she is gone.

 

000

_Sam does not know how much time has passed. Time is becoming a blur. She is eating tasteless food, she is trying to move around in the dark but most of the time she is sleeping. She knows she is being drugged and it is hard to think a coherent thought. She is weak and she feels herself growing weaker all the time. Her memory is fragmented. That worries her. There are gaps and holes that she can’t fill. She is starting to have a really hard time remembering what happened in the "Table of Contents". She still knows what Jack did – but the memories are becoming hazy and a great loss is filling her. She is starting to lose him._

_She is being moved. She is going on a journey that lasts for a long time._

_There is a blow to her head._

_Everything turns gray._

_The memories grow dark._

_Then there is nothing._

ooo

_One year later_

Maria finds her ex-husband and their daughters sprawled on the park lawn. It is a hot day and they seem to be asleep. A book is resting upturned on Jack's chest. It looks as if he has been reading to the girls, but Maria suspects that it is Hanna who has been reading to her sister and her father. Probably something that Kate is still too young to grasp.

Maria doesn't regret the divorce. She fell out of love with him a long time ago, even before he started the affair with Samantha Spade. But that did not prevent her of harboring a lot of bitter feelings. Maria had started to resent the way he came home at night, withdrawn, his mind preoccupied with people and issues much more important to him, it seemed, than his family.

 _If_ he came home at all.

He never talked much about the cases and what he went through, but there were days when Maria sensed a darkness about him. A darkness she did not understand. Something she started to be afraid of.

It made her want not to touch him any more, not to look into his black eyes – made her want to discard him and live a normal life again.

With a man more stable and saner, she thinks. Someone like Bernard Scoggins.

No, she does not regret the divorce; she does not regret not being with him anymore. But in that moment, watching him sleep in the warm sunshine, his daughters' dark heads resting on his shoulders, she feels an unexpected surge of the old love. That warm feeling she had for him in the beginning of their relationship. She knows that he loved her far more than she loved him. That was part of his attraction. It was also the reason the affair had hurt her so much. Not the simple fact of his infidelity, but the realization that his feelings for Samantha Spade were so much deeper than anything he had ever felt for her. She would always be second best after that and it made her want to hurt him as much as he had hurt her.

She understands now that they have hurt each other too much.

Jack opens his eyes and sees her. She notes an invisible veil going down, closing her off. They talk about everyday matters and about their daughters. After the deposition he never again betrayed a single shred of feeling toward her.

Actually Jack is not showing many feelings at all these days. He is not talking much either. If anyone were to ask Vivien, she would say that he is losing the ability to communicate, at least on a personal level.

The last year has taken its toll.

Kate snuggles closer to her father. He is flying back to New York in the evening and Maria knows there will be tears again. Hannah and Kate want him near. They need him. But what they also sense without being told, is that he needs them. They treat him like a bird with a broken wing. At least that is the picture that comes to Maria's mind.

Jack arrives in New York late at night. His first stop is at his office. He is not sleeping much anymore and he often works until the early morning hours. His job, always something of a mission with him has become an obsession. It is not just about Sam. It is about everyone gone missing. He feels he owes it to them and their families to do his very best. Their percentage of solved cases has gone up in the last year. He has even solved a couple of old ones. There are those in the FBI who claim he is developing a sixth sense to find missing persons.

When he comes in, he finds Agatha still at work. She is going over the old cases he has solved, studying every detail, trying to determine what exactly it was that led him to success. She is starting to realize that in order to become really good at her job she has to develop the right amount of understanding and dedication. She does not yet understand that she will also have to care.

Jack is drawn to the pool of light around her desk. They change a couple of words but they are still not beyond the frosty stage of their relationship. He retreats into his office. Two hours later she finds him asleep at his desk, newspaper clippings spread around him. She looks at them. There are pictures with lots of smiling faces in them. She realizes he is collecting stories of missing people that came back.

 

000

_Two years later_

Danny and his wife are expecting their first child and he is ecstatically happy. His happiness lightens the mood in the team. The last two years have been pretty grim. Vivien had a long sick-leave and is just coming back again to everyone's relief. Martin is single again after some traumatic fights with his girlfriend who accused him of not being able to commit. Worst of all is the relationship between Agatha and Jack which can best be described as not being one at all. Agatha is deeply envious of Jack's talent for his job, constantly second guessing and obstructing him. She has also started to spread stories around. Thanks to her everyone in the building knows exactly how much time he spends burning the midnight oil over the old Samantha Spade case:

_Poor old Jack. I hear he still refuses to see the psychologist? Isn't it sad to see someone go down like that! By the way, I heard he had an affair with Samantha Spade? Really? Do you think he was in love with her? Oh God, how tragic!_

Jack trusts her about as far as he can throw a mountain. He _has_ tried to get rid of her but her family is too influential. Also, he has no intention of going down. Not as long as he has not found Sam. The day he finds her body he might reconsider that, but right now he is hanging on, he is hanging on to her.

Vivien finds Jack leaning against the window frame in the dimly lit bullpen, looking out at the city lights. She can remember another night she found him in exactly the same spot. It was during the Sean Collins Case.

"You are a hope-junkie like the rest of us," she told him then and she knows that is still true.

He smiles when he sees her, a faint light shining for a short moment in those dark eyes.

"It's good to have you back," he says.

"It's good to be back."

A lot more things pass between them, all unspoken.

Today they found a child they were looking for – dead. Jack has just finished speaking to the mother. He has always been good with people but Vivien thinks he is doing even better now. The families feel that he knows what they are going through. A bright warm spot for him glows in her heart.

"What are you thinking about?" she asks.

"Chet Collins," he answers his voice steady.

Vivien nods:

"I remember we talked about how he should move on. I guess life proved us wrong. _He_ proved us wrong," she replies.

Jack looks at her.

"Are you giving up, Jack?" she asks gently.

His eyes bore into hers.

"No, I'm not giving up on her. I will keep going. Remember, I'm a hope-junkie like the rest of you?" He tries to smile.

"No, Jack," Vivien says, "that is not what I mean. Are you giving up on yourself?"

His gaze wanders out the window and he does not answer.

"Once you find her, whether she is dead or alive, will you know how to go on?"

"If I find her alive, I _will_ know how to go on."

"Are you sure Jack?" she whispers.

Something breaks open in his eyes and she sees the horrible pain he is in.

"Oh God, Vivien," he says barely audible, "I don't know. I will try."

 

ooo

_Three years later_

Jack opens the file he has been keeping for the last three years. It contains only a few sheets of paper. He has written down everything about Sam's disappearance that seemed important and much that did not seem important at all, just in case. He is reading through it one more time. He has done so often in the past years. But still there is nothing to go on – nothing at all. Sometimes he even thinks it would be a relief to find out that she had some sort of secret life – something, anything that would explain where she went.

He opens another file. This one is thick with clippings. It contains newspaper stories on people turning up with amnesia and without identity, police reports on unidentified corpses and pictures of women looking remotely like Sam – everything that might be interesting.

Then there is a third file. It is not quite as substantial as the second one, but it contains his real obsession – stories about missing people that turned up again. He does not really understand why he keeps collecting these, as if his life depended on it. It may be a hope-thing, he ponders. Dr. Harris, the psychologist would probably know how to explain it.

In the last couple of weeks he has once more spoken to all the people they originally interviewed. The want to help him, but there has not been anything new this year, either. Most of them know him by first name now. He is treated like an old friend. They know he will be back next year.

Jack turns to a small box filled with letters. He found it in Sam's apartment three years ago. He reads them again, one by one. There are letters from a couple of friends, dating back to her school days and some letters and notes from former lovers it seems, dated more than eight years ago. There is one letter from Martin, dated months before Jack suspected that there was something between them. It seems to have been written while he was on vacation, because he writes, that he misses her and how much he loves her. He also writes how happy he is that she has finally put the episode with Jack behind her. That is the word he uses – episode.

The word haunts Jack. He wonders if Sam ever used that word to describe their relationship. The thought hurts. But maybe it was Martin’s choice.

For Jack it has been no episode. For him it has never truly been over, regardless what he might have told her. He can admit that to himself now. The choices he made against her and for his family were not really choices. He forced himself to make them, but part of him was never been able to let her go. Not for a moment.

He puts the letter aside and takes the last item out of the box. It is a note he wrote to Sam two days before she disappeared. He left it on her desk in the evening because she was busy in the archive when he went home. It simply says that he will be in a little later in the morning because he has to accompany his father to the neurologist. It is signed: _See you later – Jack._

He never saw her again.

Jack sits motionless after putting the letters and notes back into the box, not understanding why she would keep a simple note from him. He feels drained.

He feels so empty, in that moment he wants to die.

 

ooo

_Four years later_

Jack goes through a thin stack of old clippings. A private detective in the mid-west, an old acquaintance dating back to Jack's days in the military has gone through the archive of small town newspapers.

Jack knows he is really far out now. In a short flash he sees himself, years from now, going through newspaper stories from small towns in Europe. Maybe even China. That almost makes him chuckle but it does not make him waver.

The next article he picks up contains a picture of a group of four people: an elderly couple, a young man and a young woman. The man has his arms wrapped around the woman in a tight embrace, her face is half hidden. The caption reads: _Eleanor Carter, only child of Robert and Matilda Carter is home again after eighteen years._

Jack starts to read the story. Eleanor is the Carter's only daughter. The family is affluent and influential on their small town scale. One of Matilda Carter's ancestors, Stewart Ross founded the town and her husband owns a plant producing fertilizer. Eleanor herself ran away as a teenager and remained missing for eighteen years. Three months ago she was admitted to the local hospital after a car accident. Apparently she was on her way to see her parents but nobody knows that for sure. Eleanor sustained a head injury in the accident and she has lost her memory. The article states that small glimpses of memory have returned but full recovery will take time. Nevertheless the Carter's are happy to have her back. So is the young man in the picture, Nick Carter, Eleanor's cousin who was raised by the Carter's, after his parents died. He and Eleanor are planning to marry.

The article is written more than three years ago.

Jack's eyes wander back to the half-hidden face of the young woman. He sees her eyes, her nose and half a curve of a smiling mouth. Her hair is short and blonde. The man is holding her very tight and Jack notices that she is not hugging him back but has crossed her arms over her chest.

He puts the clipping down and looks out of the window. He thinks that he is probably going crazy. It is, of course, again late at night. With a sigh he rubs his eyes, opens a drawer and takes out a magnifying glass. He studies the face of Eleanor Carter very carefully. His heart starts to beat heavily in his chest. Breathing is suddenly difficult. He puts the picture and the magnifying glass down again and decides to get some coffee. He will not be able to sleep after that but he does not care.

He drinks the hot liquid in small sips while looking out of the window. Finally he wanders back to his desk again, sits down, picks up the magnifying glass and studies the picture one more time. He knows then that it is her. Gently he puts everything down, covers his eyes and after four years finally starts to cry.

 

ooo

_Eleanor Carter looks at herself in the mirror. There are dark smudges beneath her eyes. She has not been feeling well lately – to tell the truth, she has not been feeling well for as long as she can remember._

_At first things were not that bad. Everyone was kind and loving. They talked about that she would soon get her memory back, and although things around her seemed alien to her mind she told herself that was probably only a side-effect of the amnesia. Yes, she would soon get her memories back and remember everything, the town she grew up in and where she belongs, her parents who adopted her when she was just two days old, who adored her and spoiled her until she could stand it no longer and ran away and of course her cousin Nick who has loved her since she was just a kid and who has lately taken to beating her because she still wants her memory back before she marries him. That is where she belongs and where she feels like a stranger._

_She still has headaches and nightmares after the accident._

_Eleanor turns her head, pushes aside her long hair and looks at the scar which runs across her temple and continues to the back of her head, concealed by her hair._

_Apparently she was hit by a car._

_She remembers nothing about the accident. She was found near a bus stop, on the side of the road, unconscious. Cousin Nick identified her at the hospital and since then he has basically run her life and that of her elderly, well-meaning, fussy, keeping-up-appearances parents._

_Eleanor is lost and helpless. She has no choice but to let it happen. She tries to regain her strength, but Nick does not want her to be strong. He needs to be in control, he needs to rule and he does not need anyone to tell him otherwise._

_Eleanor is tired. The constant fight against Nick, against giving up whatever shred is left of her identity, the fight against giving up hope is becoming more than she can bear._

_There is only one thing that keeps her going. She knows there is someone waiting for her. How she knows, she can’t say. It’s not a memory, it’s a feeling and it is at the core of her being. Who that is, she does not know, but she is sure he waits, patiently. She is sure he would wait forever; waiting to see her – later._

_Eleanor knows that late is starting to get very late and will soon be too late._

_The door to the bedroom opens and Nick enters the room. He smiles his radiant smile when he sees her. She smiles back, valiantly. She raises her arms to tie back her hair because she knows he likes it that way but winces with pain when her left arm reaches shoulder height._

" _I'm sorry," Nick says, "I guess I've been a little rough yesterday. Just try not to make me that angry."_

_He comes closer and rests his hand on her neck._

_It could be a caress. It could also be a threat._

_ooo_

Detective Sonia Allen of the Rosstown PD looks at the FBI-Agent who is sitting across from her desk on the most uncomfortable chair she could find in the building.

Sonia is a nice person. People tend to feel comfortable in her presence. They feel that she understands. That would be okay if she had taken over her mother's business, the local beauty parlor. But she fell in love with police work.

Sonia is completely dedicated to her job. The only problem is that she knows everyone in this town and she likes her people. And they like her. Because of that, one of her drawers is overflowing with parking tickets the mayor thinks he does not need to pay, parking tickets that Nick Carter, who all but owns the biggest business in town, the fertilizer plant, _knows_ he does not have to pay. That is why Bob Crawford, the veterinarian got away with killing a tramp that allegedly molested his daughter five years ago. Sonia herself buried the evidence after Robert called her in a panic, his voice choked with tears. He did not mean it to happen, of course.

That one haunts Sonia. It will haunt her for the rest of her life. She does not want to be that kind of cop. She does believe in justice.

For all those reasons she needs the chair in her office to be uncomfortable. She wants to cause people discomfort. It gives her the strength not to be nice to them. Sometimes it even works.

The FBI-Agent is wearing a black suit and tie. His hair is close-cropped and silver-streaked. There are deep lines of worry and pain in his face and Sonia wonders what happened to him. She remembers her father looking like that when her mother died of cancer only fifty years of age. But this guy looks worse.

He is shifting uncomfortably on the chair and Sonia feels an instant sympathy toward him. She also gets the feeling that he has been hurt enough.

"Sorry," she says, "just a moment."

She leaves the office and returns a short time later offering him a seat that is much more comfortable.

Jack tries to hide his surprise. He has been used to a little bit of everything with the police over the years. Very few are happy to see him. There has been annoyance, attempts to obstruct or to hide, sometimes outright hostility but also every so often grudging respect.

He is not, though, used to outright helpfulness, even before he states his business.

Sonia Allen makes sure he is comfortable and offers him a cup of coffee that he gratefully accepts.

"What can I do for you?" she asks.

Jack hands her a photo.

"Do you know this woman?"

Sonia looks down at a picture of Eleanor Carter looking unexpectedly healthy, staring into the camera with an assuredness she does not have these days.

"Yes," she says, putting down the picture, feeling uneasy. "That is Eleanor Carter."

The FBI-Agent shakes his head.

"No," he says in a voice that is trembling with emotion, "That is an FBI-Agent named Samantha Spade. She worked Missing Persons in New York and vanished four years ago."

"Oh my God."

The words escape Sonia's mouth in a rush. She remembers how happy they all were to have Eleanor back. She remembers Nick, face beaming, telling her that everything finally will be all right, laying all her old suspicions to rest. Things have seemed good for the past years. It was disappointing that Eleanor's memory did not improve, but apart from that Sonia has not allowed herself to mistrust the claim that this woman is, in fact, Eleanor Carter. Lately, though, she has had a bad feeling. For the past year Eleanor has hardly left the house, there is still no marriage and as far as Sonia can tell, still no memories.

The Agent is looking at her. His eyes are bloodshot and she thinks she can detect tears, but his gaze is steady.

"You better tell me what's going on," he says.

So Sonia tells him. She knows she has made a horrible mistake. She has not been suspicious enough.

 

ooo

„I understand that she looked a lot like the Eleanor that you remembered, but didn't it cross your mind to get a DNA test?" Jack asks Sonia Allen.

Sonia nods. She should probably feel uncomfortable under the scrutiny of his dark eyes, but she does not. Here is finally someone who wants the truth. This man is a truth-seeker. He will not cover up, he will not budge, he will not pretend, he will not be bought. She respects that a lot. Of course Sonia does not know about Graham Spaulding. She does not know about Rick Knowles and what it takes to get a man like Jack Malone to bend the rules. Hopefully she never will.

"I did," she says, "and I even looked into the possibilities. I didn't tell anyone, though. Eleanor was adopted. It was a closed adoption. But I managed to get the names of her biological parents."

Sometimes, Sonia thinks, being nice and unthreatening has its benefits. People usually tell her what she wants to know.

"They were unfortunately both deceased."

"And you never followed it up?"

Sonia stares at him for a long time, feeling guilty. She knows she is somehow responsible for his pain – and for Eleanor's pain. No, make that Samantha Spade's pain.

"Look," she finally says, her tone defensive, "I fucked up. Okay?"

"No."

Jack's voice is low.

"It is _not_ okay."

Sonia holds up her hands in surrender.

"I will help you. I will! What else do you want to know?"

"What about her memory?"

"As far as I know there has been nothing much. But the specialist _said_ there were cases where the memory was never recovered. So it was not unprecedented."

"What do you mean by 'nothing much'?"

"She told me she remembered my face."

"So she remembered you?"

"Well, my face, she said. But I have to tell you, if she really is Samantha Spade she could have seen me at your New York office about five or six years ago. Nick asked me to check out a lead on Eleanor. She was apparently seen working in a bookstore in New York. So I went and I coordinated with your office. She could have seen me."

"I need to see her," Jack says quietly.

Sonia sighs.

"We have to handle that one with care. Tilda and Bert will probably break to pieces no matter what we do, but I'm concerned about Nick. I don't trust him. He might get violent."

"Does he have a gun in the house?"

"He sure does!"

Sonia is quiet for a moment, debating whether to tell him. She can see how invested he is in that Samantha Spade.

"I think there is a possibility that Nick is abusing her," she finally says, "I have no proof of that, but…"

She stops. His face has changed. His eyes are black and furious.

"Since when?"

She can barely hear his voice and she is suddenly glad they are not on different sides. He would be a frightening opponent.

"A couple of months, maybe a year?" she offers.

His eyelids flutter and then close.

"I need to see her," he repeats.

"Okay," Sonia says, opening a drawer and holstering her gun.

 

ooo

Sonia pulls up in front of a wealthy-looking residence.

"The Carter's are the richest family in town," she says turning to Jack, "Bert's father made the money and Bert invested it wisely. They also own the fertilizer plant. Nick and Eleanor are going to inherit the whole thing. At least they were. Tilda and Bert never managed to have children of their own. Eleanor's disappearance was a catastrophe. They never got over it, especially Nick. He adored her. Worshipped the ground she walked on."

She falls silent. After a while she says:

"His car’s not here. Let's get to them before he comes back. He usually runs the whole show when he's around."

Tilda Carter opens the door.

"Well, Sonia," she says surprised," To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?"

"This is Special Agent Jack Malone, Tilda. He’s from the FBI. We need to talk to you, Bert and Eleanor."

Tilda's eyes widen with fear and Sonia instantly knows that Tilda knows. She is kicking herself inwardly for having been complacent and asleep for too long.

"Oh," Tilda says nervously, „this is not convenient at all, and Nick is not here. I'm afraid it will have to wait."

Sonia does not care about being nice anymore. She pushes her way in.

"This is very important, Tilda, and it can't wait. We have to do this now."

Jack follows her.

"Who is it, mother?" a voice asks. Jack recognizes it instantly.

He looks up. Sam is standing on top of a flight of stairs. She looks thin and ill. He has to hold himself back not to bolt up the steps.

"Never mind, baby girl," Tilda says in a high voice, "Just take a nap the way you planned to, and your father and I will take care of this."

Sam is coming down the stairs.

"Take care of what?"

She looks directly at Jack but there is no recognition in her eyes.

Tilda climbs up the stairs to meet her. She grabs her hand and starts to pull her away.

"Never mind," she says.

Sam turns to follow.

Jack is glued to his spot. He feels paralyzed. He does not know what to do.

Then she turns her head, looks at him, and her mouth silently forms one word:

"Jack?"

"Mrs Carter," he says, "I need to speak to your daughter. Now. Alone."

Sam pulls away from Tilda.

"Okay," she says, „Let's talk in the library."

She leaves Tilda standing on the stairs, speechless.

Jack follows Sam and Sonia into the library and closes the door. They are ignoring Tilda's pleading cry:

"Eleanor!"

He turns around to face her. He is unable to speak.

In a sudden flash Sam sees herself being lifted up, carefully so as not to hurt her more than necessary, slowly, because the man lifting her has a bad knee that can’t really support their combined weight.

"It _is_ you," she whispers. For a moment she closes her eyes because memories are coming back to her in bursts. But she opens them again almost immediately to look at him, drinking in his appearance. No one in the past years has ever looked so good, so familiar to her. She reaches up to touch his face and he leans into her hand, closing his eyes for one moment.

"Sam," he says.

Oddly enough she hears another voice intruding, a voice from the past:

"Jack is calling you Sam all the time."

And in a flash _everything_ is there, their time together, his fingertips softly brushing her cheek while his voice tells her that it is over, their hands, grabbing each other’s arms, knowing that they might never see each other again and then his eyes staring into her own:

"Yeah, I'm going to miss it."

So she touches his face and she starts to cry.

Jack is desperately fighting for composure. He can’t go weak now. He wraps her up in his arms solely to steady himself.

"Jack?"

He manages to utter a low rumble. Anything more and he fears he will start to sob.

"When you leave here take me with you. Don't let me stay."

"I won't," he says, his voice choked.

"Well then," Sonia mumbles in the background, "I have the feeling that case is solved."

She looks out of the window to make sure there is no sign of Nick.

Jack looks at her. There is a plea in his eyes.

"Yeah, all right," she says, "I'm getting you two out of here right now."

Jack leads Sam to the police car while Sonia is trying to calm down a hysterically weeping Tilda. After a while she seems to give up about the calming down bit. Jack hears her demanding voice:

"Tell me what happened to Eleanor. You know. I _know_ that you know."

There is more weeping and Tilda is shouting something unintelligible at Sonia. Sonia raises her voice:

"Tell me where he buried her."

She is almost screaming.

Jack shifts his attention back to Sam. He settles down with her on the backseat not releasing her from his arms. She is shaking all over as if in shock. Her face is buried in his neck. He strokes her back. His hands are trembling but he does not notice.

Sonia comes running. She bends down and looks at Jack.

"I want to take your colleague to the hospital as soon as my back-up's here. We will make sure that Nick doesn't get away with anything. God, I will take that sucker down!"

Jack looks at her.

"You think he killed her?"

She looks away.

"It is something that has always been at the back of my mind. I never did anything about it. I mean, the Carters own the only major company in town. A lot of people depend on them."

Her gaze wanders to the huge garden.

"I'm going to find her," she says.

 

 

ooo

Jack paces around the waiting room. Sam has been with a doctor and a nurse for almost an hour now. He is becoming concerned. It is not the kind of concern that just drives you crazy, it is the kind that makes you want to break down the door, because you can’t stand it anymore.

Sonia looks at him.

"Are you all right?"

"I will be," he answers.

Finally the doctor shows up, looking frazzled. He closes the door and shakes his head.

"God, Sonia, I can't believe this story. It's totally crazy."

"Well," Sonia says quietly, "you better believe it. We are looking for Nick all over right now. I hope we'll find him soon."

"He has been beating the crap out of her. I never thought Nick would do something like that."

Jack has only felt like this once before in his life. That was almost five years ago, when he saw her on a stretcher, being lifted into an ambulance, her face beaten up and bloodied after her almost deadly run-in with the gang of drug-dealers. He feels anger and an overwhelming guilt. And with it comes the feeling of unworthiness, of not having the right to be in her presence. The feelings are irrational, of course. This is not five years ago. He is in no way responsible for what Nick did to her.

The doctor finally becomes aware that there is someone else in the room.

"Oh, sorry," he states. He contemplates the aging FBI-Agent with the hunched shoulders and thinks that he looks remarkably unaffected.

"Are you the husband?"

"No, no," Sonia answers, "Ms Spade is not married. This is her colleague from New York, Special Agent Jack Malone."

"Oh," the doctor says surprised, "So you are Jack. I assumed she spoke of her husband. Well, never mind, she asked for you. Come with me please."

Jack follows him into an examination room. Sam is sitting on an examination table looking lost. When she sees him relief fills her eyes. He stops at a distance.

"Sit down," the doctor says, pulling up a chair and placing it close to Sam. "This will take a while. We need to wait for the police photographer. I want to document this."

He leaves the room again and closes the door.

Sam looks at Jack but he avoids her gaze. He sits down and takes her hand lightly in both of his. She notices the golden wedding band on his left hand.

She feels confused. She very clearly remembers their time together, she remembers how good working with him is and above all she remembers her love for him – no, she _feels_ her love for him. It is like a tree, standing firmly rooted in good soil, its trunk growing upwards strongly, the branches reaching for the sun and the stars. But maybe it is just not the same for him. Maybe what he feels is more about sympathy than love.

"Have you been looking for me all that time?" she asks almost shyly.

"Yes," he says simply as if it has been nothing. Then he grows mute. There is a long silence between them and Sam suddenly feels like crying.

After a while the photographer arrives. Jack wants to leave the room but the way to the door is blocked by the doctor, Sonia and two nurses so he retreats to the back of the room and tries not to be in the way. Then he sees how uncomfortable Sam is.

"Look," he says to Sonia, "It's getting pretty crowded in here. I think maybe a nurse and the photographer would be enough?"

One of the nurses nods in understanding and starts to usher the others out.

Sam turns to face Jack.

"Don't go."

It sounds like a plea.

So Jack stays. He looks at what Nick Carter did to her. He sees that some of it left scars. He notes fresh weals on her back. Sam's head is bent. She does not see his face. If she had, there would never again be any doubt in her heart, how much he loves her.

When the photographer leaves, the nurse, sensing something between the man and the woman she does not want to intrude in, quietly retreats. Jack helps Sam to get rid of the hospital gown and assists her in putting on jeans and a t-shirt. He sees that she is moving slowly because of the multitude of bruises. He brushes aside her hair and feels a painful stab go through him when he sees the scar that starts at her temple and is traveling back on her head. He traces it with his fingers. It is far too long.

Sam leans into him. He puts his arms around her.

"Sam, Sam," he whispers into her ear and Sam is comfortable like this, feeling his arms tighten around her, hearing him repeat her name over and over again with something that she cannot name, something that could be pain and joy, guilt and love, rage and tenderness all rolled up into one.

A nurse opens the door.

"The psychologist can see you now," she says to Sam.

Sam looks startled.

"Oh god, no," she groans, "That was not part of the deal. I don't think that’s necessary."

"It's Dr. Grant, Eleanor. I thought you liked him. Hasn't he helped you before?"

Both Sam and Jack are taken aback when she is called by that name.

"Samantha," Sam corrects, "My real name is Samantha, Erica."

She is still standing in the middle of a flood of returning memories and the past seems much more real, much more "present" than Rosstown and the people she has known for the past four years.

She lifts her face up to Jack. His eyes are smiling into hers.

"I don't want to see Dr. Grant. I will talk to Dr. Harris, though, when I get back to New York," she says.

Jack laughs. It is a wonderful sound and Sam smiles at him:

"Yeah, you heard right."

"I never thought I'd hear you say that."

Erica starts to respond but then thinks better of it. The man and the woman she has known as Eleanor are starting to laugh at some private joke. Right now there is an intimacy between them that is oblivious about anything else in the world.

 

ooo

The uncomfortable chair has been pushed back against the wall. Sonia Allen perches on the edge of her desk looking worried. Sam is sitting in Sonia's chair. She is wearing a pair of pink sandals that Erica found for her at the hospital. She left the Carter's home barefooted. Sonia has offered to pack some of her belongings, but Sam does not want anything that belonged to "Eleanor". Jack is sitting beside her. Sonia wonders what is wrong with him. She expected him to be happy, excited, anything but the way he looks - pale and worn and tired. Not that she herself feels any different.

"We still don't know where he is. I have people posted in front of the house and on the roads leaving town. He is probably already gone."

She feels Jack's eyes on her and sighs deeply.

"This is a real mess. I do have the department and the chief of police behind me but most of the people in town are just plain furious."

She heaves another sigh.

"I have two rooms for you in the hotel across the street and I will have a police officer standing watch all night. You can leave in the morning. That all right with you?"

 

ooo

Sam's eyes are dropping when they reach the door of her hotel room. Jack looks around. The corridor is empty. He can hear the voice of the policeman who will watch over them, talking to the hotel-manager down in the lobby.

Sam wants to ask Jack to stay with her, but she hesitates. After all he has done for her maybe she should not bother him with her neediness.

"Will you be all right?" he asks, not touching her.

"Yes," she says.

"I'll be in the next room. If you need something knock on the wall. And the police officer will be outside in the corridor all night."

Sam nods.

"Okay then. I'll just check your room."

Jack goes through the room. He checks the closets and even the shower cabin. When he is finished Sam smiles. He smiles back.

"Better safe than sorry," he says.

"You checked the drawers. Last time I saw him Nick was still too big to fit in one of these."

"Sam, do you think that Nick might try to get to you?"

She thinks about that. After a while she says:

"I honestly don't know. But I kind of doubt he would be that crazy."

In spite of her words Jack wants to grab her, take her to the nearest car and just get the hell out of Dodge, but he can see she can do with a good night’s sleep. There is a night clerk in the hotel lobby and a police officer in the corridor. They will be safe.

"Go, get some sleep," Sam says, touching his cheek briefly.

"You, too. And keep your door locked from the inside"

Jack leaves the room, closing the door behind him and leans against it for just a moment. Nodding at the police officer who has taken up his position he forces himself to go into his own room. He sits down on the bed to remove his shoes. After a while he becomes aware that he has been sitting like that for at least ten minutes, unmoving, listening for any sound from Sam's room. He tries to take his mind away from her, but the attempt is futile. After sitting there for another half hour he gives in, drawing an armchair to one side of the room, sitting down in it. He leans back and rests his head on the wall that separates them. He closes his eyes and tries to rest.

 

 

ooo

Jack is awakened by a muffled scream. He bolts up, confused, trying to get his bearing. It is dark in the room. Moonlight is filtering in through the curtains. Somewhere someone is knocking on a door, shouting:

"Ms Spade, Ms Spade, are you all right?"

Jack gets to his feet and pulls open the door. The police officer is still knocking on Sam's door, worry on his face.

"Ms Spade?"

"Who is it?" Sam's voice says, sounding scared.

Jack pushes the officer aside.

"It's me, Jack. Open the door, Sam."

"Jack?"

"Yeah, sweetheart, it's me. Please open the door."

He hears the patter of naked feet on the wooden floor. The door opens. Jack gently pushes it wider. Sam is standing there, wearing only a t-shirt. She looks sweaty and disheveled.

"I'm sorry," she says, "I must have had a bad dream. Jack?"

To see him standing there is like seeing a mirage. She can hardly comprehend that yesterday happened. She bursts into tears. Angrily she tries to wipe them away.

"I'm sorry. I'm such a baby."

Jack steps into the room, closes the door and takes her into his arms.

"No," he whispers into her hair, "you're not a baby. You just went through hell."

When the bout of weeping passes, he leads her to the bed and tucks her in. Then, with only a moment’s hesitation he lies down beside her, still fully clothed and draws her into his arms. She feels thin and frail. With a sigh she relaxes into him. A couple of minutes pass until he hears her even breaths. He shifts his head until his lips rest against her forehead, closing his eyes.

 

ooo

In the middle of the night he awakens and finds her gone. He reaches out for her but his hands only find the empty covers.

"Sam," he cries out, hearing the panic in his voice.

She answers him. Her voice is close.

"Jack? Jack, I'm here. I had to go to the bathroom."

She slips in beside him, resting her head on his shoulder as if it is the most natural thing in the world.

They fall into a deep sleep.

 

 

ooo

When Jack awakens a few hours later the first morning light filters into the room. Sam is still asleep. Her back is pressed against him and his arms are around her. He slowly extracts himself from her. She groans in her sleep and curls up into a ball. When he looks at her a reluctant happiness rises in him. He hardly recognizes the feeling.

He bends over and touches her hair. She sleepily opens her eyes. A smile spreads across her face when she sees him. His heart almost stops.

"I'll go and take a shower," he says, "I'll be right back."

Jack is actually humming a tune while the water runs down his body. When he is finished he dries off and wraps the towel around his hips. He opens the bathroom door and stops dead.

A man is kneeling on the bed. One of his hands is tangled in Sam's hair, pulling her close to him. The other hand is pressing a gun to her throat.

Jack holds up his hands in surrender.

„You don't want to do that."

His voice is calm.

Sam is making no sound. Jack can see that the man is hurting her. He assumes that it is Nick. The door to the corridor is ajar. He tries to remember if he locked it. Terror is clenching the muscles in his stomach.

His gaze finds Nick's eyes. They are clouded. There is madness in them.

"What do you want?"

"I want Eleanor back!" Nick's whisper sounds like a scream.

"Eleanor is not here."

"I now that, stupid. But you will help me get her back, right?"

"I will help you, but you have to let Samantha go first, Nick."

"No. No, it's her fault. It's her fault that Eleanor went away. She has to answer for that."

He presses the gun deeper into the soft skin under her jaw. Sam makes a choking noise.

Jack tries desperately to stay calm and rational. He cannot find much sense in what Nick is saying.

"It is not Samantha's fault. Eleanor went away on her own a long time ago. It’s nobody's fault. You have to let Samantha go and I will help you, I will help you."

"No, no, you're wrong," Nick whispers, looking into a void of dark memories. "She did not go away on her own. I want someone to answer for that."

"Who made her go away, Nick?"

Tears are running down his face.

"I don't know, I don't remember. I had to bury her. In the glade behind the rose garden. She loved that place." He starts to cry.

"Samantha did not kill her, Nick. You can let her go."

"She made Eleanor go away. Don't tell me to let her go. Don't tell me that."

The gun is digging ever deeper into Sam's throat. Jack, despairing, can’t stand it. He tries to imagine what is going on inside Nick's head.

"Samantha did not kill Eleanor. She is innocent. I know who killed her. I know who took Eleanor away from you. Let me answer for it."

Nick stops crying. He looks at Jack with cold eyes.

"I know who did this to you. I will answer for it."

"You bastard," he says. He pushes Sam away. She falls to the floor. He trains his gun on Jack.

"Get down!"

"It’s okay, Nick, I will answer for it."

"Get down!"

Jack slowly gets down on his knees.

"Jack," he hears Sam whisper somewhere, a thousand miles away.

_I want Samantha._

Nick steps up behind Jack. He puts a hand under his jaw and presses the muzzle of the gun against his right temple.

"Okay, Nick. Now let her go. You don't need her anymore."

Nick gives Sam a sign with his hand.

"Get out!"

But Sam stays.

"Come on. Get out. You're not her. I don't need you anymore."

Jack tries to move his head but Nick has locked him in his grip. He catches a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eyes.

"Sam, please…"

She just looks at him.

"You know, Nick," she finally says, "You were hurt terribly when Eleanor died. The man who did that to you deserves to be punished. But I think you know who it was. You know it was not Jack, don't you?"

Nick's gaze flicks to her.

"You know it was not Jack. Who was it, Nick? Who killed Eleanor?"

Nick's eyes seem to look inward.

"You can see him. Who was it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You were there when Eleanor was killed, weren't you?"

"Yes," he says, uncertainty in his voice.

"So you know who killed her. You saw him. Tell me who it was," she demands.

There is a long silence.

 

ooo

The night clerk in the hotel lobby is awakened by a gunshot and almost falls off his chair. He scans the lobby with his eyes. At the foot of the stairs lies the police officer, unconscious.

"Fuck!" the clerk exclaims and grabs the telephone.

 

ooo

It is very quiet in the room. The acid smell of gunpowder is hanging in the air. Outside a lone bird begins to sing.

Jack's face is sprinkled with blood. He wipes his brow and his hands come away red.

Sam is crouched on the floor, hands pressed to her mouth. Nick has fallen down on the other side of the bed. She can’t see his body.

Jack rises to his feet. He wipes his hand on the towel he is wearing. Walking over to Sam he kneels in front of her and touches her arms. She leashes out at him, hitting him hard.

"You bastard," she screams, "You could have been killed. What were you trying to do?"

Jack tries to ward off the blows. He is totally numb. He only feels her anger. And he knows he left the door unlocked.

Sam gets a hold of herself. She presses one hand to her mouth, putting the other one on his chest. There is such distress in his face.

"It's okay, Jack. It's okay. I'm sorry."

They stay like that until Sonia crashes through the door, her gun drawn.

 

ooo

It is two days later before they finally get the chance to leave Rosstown. The flight back to New York is as unpleasant as the past days have been. Sam is sitting in a window seat staring out at the skies. She is oblivious of the view. Some part of her feels guilty about Nick's suicide. She knew he would react strongly. She knows how violent a streak he had in him. And she did hope he would direct that reaction at himself, not Jack.

Sam rests her forehead on the window. She made a man kill himself. That knowledge will be buried deep inside herself only to be taken out in moments like this.

Her mind returns to Jack, kneeling on the floor, powerless.

She looks across the aisle to where he sits. She would have preferred them to sit together but the flight had been almost booked out. His eyes are closed. He looks like he is sleeping, his face a pasty white, his features drawn. He has not allowed her to reach out to him.

 

 

ooo

They come back to New York early in the evening. Jack called ahead and Vivien said they would all wait for them.

When they ride up to the 12th floor Jack's gaze is fixed on the elevator doors. He dreads the moment when they open. In a short time he will have to let Sam go, he will have to let her out of his sight and the thought of that is unbearable.

The elevator doors open and Martin is standing there. He is simply opening his arms and Sam throws herself into them.

"Wow," he says. "Baby. Samantha. God, it's good to have you back."

He holds her tight and rocks her gently back and forth.

For Jack that is the last straw. It’s like a physical blow. He tries to recover, but he can’t. The thought of her being with someone else has crossed his mind a lot these past days since he almost got her killed by forgetting to lock a fucking door and now that moment is already here, full force.

He tries to keep up an outward composure.

After all, he found her, she is alive, she will heal. That is good enough.

Danny and Vivien are hurrying down the corridor and while Sam wanders from embrace to embrace and Danny tries to hide his tears, Jack quietly slips away to his office. Only Agatha notices and sends him a thoughtful look.

Jack draws the blinds and sits heavily down at his desk. In his mind he hears a question Vivien asked him two years ago:

"Once you find her, will you know how to go on?"

He knows now that going on means going on without her, it means moving on, leaving her to someone else.

He hears happy voices retreat into the bullpen. After ten minutes there is a knock at his door. He doesn't answer. The door opens and Vivien enters.

"Jack?"

"What is it, Vivien?"

"My god, Jack. What is wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Jack!"

"Vivien, please, just go away."

Vivien closes the door and faces him.

"Talk to me, Jack, please."

But Jack does not know what to tell her. He has never been good at expressing himself and the last four years have done a lot of damage.

"Sam will need a place to stay," he says instead. "Maybe she can be with you for a couple of days until we figure out what to do. And her mother is coming down tomorrow. Maybe you could set her up with a hotel room?"

"Jack…"

He merely looks at her.

"Of course she can stay with me and of course I will take care of everything, but Jack…"

"Vivien, go away."

Vivien is shocked. He has been blunt before but she has never seen him like this. She can’t force him to open up to her. So she goes away.

 

ooo

Sam comes to see him half an hour later. Jack is still at his desk, apparently writing a report.

"Vivien will take me home," she says quietly.

Jack stops writing and looks at her.

"What about you, Jack?"

"I'll be going home soon. I'll just finish this."

There is silence. Tears are threatening in Sam's eyes. Jack looks at her with alarm.

"You see," she says, "I'm not sure I remember things the right way. You have to help me with that."

He puts down his pen.

"Okay?"

"We…I remember our time together."

She avoids the word affair. It is not the way she thinks about it, never has.

"It was wonderful. I know you were married and all that, but I remember it was wonderful. For me it was."

"For me, too," he says his voice so faint she can barely hear it.

"What happened afterwards?"

"I went back to my wife."

"I know that. But it did not last. You got a divorce."

Jack has no idea what she is trying to say.

Sam pulls together her courage.

"I don't understand why we are not together."

Jack exhales loudly.

"You were with Martin."

"Excuse me?"

"You were with Martin. You two broke up only a couple of weeks before you disappeared."

Sam shakes her head in disbelieve.

"Why would I be with Martin?"

Jack, of course, can’t answer that.

"I guess I still don't remember as much as I thought," she says.

She looks at him. He makes no move, says no word. He is just sitting there, hands clasped on a pile of files.

"I have to think about that," she whispers, „I better go now."

She turns and opens the door.

"You should take off that ring, Jack," she says.

 

 

ooo

When she is gone Jack looks down at his left hand. After being divorced from Marie for four years he is still wearing the ring. He pulls it off without thinking. It is far easier than he thought. He puts it down on the desk, looking at it as if he has never seen it before.

What do you do with discarded wedding rings?

He opens one of the drawers in his desk, rummaging around in its depth, pulling out a small box. He does not open it. He knows how the ring inside looks, a narrow band of platinum with a small diamond nestled in velvet folds. He bought it two days before Sam approached him with the idea of going undercover on the Colleen McGrath case. He thinks of all the things that prevented him from giving it to her.

What do you do with discarded engagement rings?

 

ooo

Vivien's kitchen is big, tidy and comfortable. Her husband and son have gone to the movies and left them alone. They settle down and she offers Sam a glass of red wine. Sam declines. Since her head injury, alcohol makes her feel disoriented. It also makes the headaches worse.

Wrapping her hand around a glass of orange juice instead, she looks at Vivien.

"Vivien, did I have a relationship with Martin?"

Vivien looks surprised.

"Yeah, you did. For at least half a year."

"I don't remember that."

"Now, that's interesting."

"What happened between Jack and me?"

"God, Samantha, I can’t really answer that, but you wasted no time getting intimate with Martin when Jack moved to Chicago."

"But he didn't move in the end."

"Well, you were with Martin. You seemed happy enough."

Sam grimaces as if in pain.

"Was Jack in love with me?"

Vivien leans on the counter and swirls the wine around in her glass.

"Were you in love with _him_?"

"I don't know. It sounds as if I was not, although that seems wrong. I am now."

"Samantha," Vivien says, "I think that if you love Jack and if you want to be with him you have to tell him. I'm pretty sure he's not going to make a move, even if his life depended on it. Use words that he can’t misunderstand. Spell it out if necessary."

"So you think he would want to be with me?"

"Samantha," Vivien puts down her glass, "This man spent four years trying to find you. Every minute he could spare he hunted down leads, one more impossible than the other. He collected the most unlikely information just because there was a remote possibility it might lead him to you. We had _nothing_ to go on. You were just gone. I have never seen anyone that committed. He would never have stopped."

She looks at Sam's stricken face.

"He went through hell and back again. Don't you ever doubt his devotion or his love for you."

Vivien picks up her glass, swallowing deeply.

"You two…I sometimes think I got my heart broken watching what went on between you. Needed surgery to fix it."

"How are you Vivien?" Sam asks quietly.

"I'm good for now, but I want you to do something for me."

"Anything."

"Then take care of Jack. I want to see him smile again. I can’t bear to see him like this anymore."

"I don't know if I can."

"Well, what happened in Rosstown? Jack is an absolute mess. What went wrong?"

Sam shakes her head, tears in her eyes.

"Nick tried to kill me. He got to me while Jack was…not there. I…I…don't really know…"

She can’t keep her composure any longer. She starts to cry.

"He saved me. He talked Nick out of believing that I was responsible for Eleanor's death."

Her voice is so clogged with tears, Vivien can hardly understand her words.

"This can't be the reason for him to act like this," she says. "To me he looks as if he personally put a gun to your head."

Sam is still crying.

"Has he reason to feel guilty about anything?"

Sam takes the Kleenex that Vivien is offering her.

"I was angry with him afterwards for risking his life. He might have taken that the wrong way."

"He retreated?"

"Completely. Sonia talked to us afterwards and I'm not even sure he heard what she said."

"I really think you should at least _try_ to talk to him again."

Sam wipes at her eyes.

"I think you're right. I'll try. Will you take me to his place?"

"I'll take you to the office. It's a safe bet he's still there."

When they step out of the elevator the lights are still on. And while Sam opens the door to Jack's office and slips inside, Vivien finds Agatha still at her desk, still at her favorite pastime – going over old cases.

Agatha watches Sam disappear into the office and says:

"A shame that the blinds are drawn."

"You are disgusting."

Agatha laughs. Vivien has started to like her better since she found out that Agatha spent a lot of time gathering information for Jack's search.

"I would like it even better if he had found her because of something I dug up."

Agatha swivels around in her chair. Strands of hair are escaping the bun she keeps them in. Her designer costume looks rumpled. But she doesn't seem to care. There is a teasing look in her eyes, but it is no longer nasty as it was before.

"Big love story going on there, huh?"

"Agatha, what are you still doing here?"

"Oh, I had a feeling I'd get a chance to stick around for the last act."

"The last act is none of your business. Don't you have a life? What about a boyfriend?"

"I can't find anyone who suits me."

"No surprise there", Vivien mumbles under her breath.

Agatha looks up at the ceiling.

"You know, Vivien," she says, "There are so many of these old cold cases around. Someday I'm going to work them fulltime. Someone has to do that."

Agatha's green eyes which usually appear hard and polished are suddenly steady, deep pools, looking into abysses Vivien only knows too well. There is a fire in them. She knows then that the last four years have not gone by Agatha Brown without leaving traces. In a way Jack has gotten to her.

Agatha has started to care.

 

ooo

Jack stares at Sam. His hands close around a small box to hide it from her view.

"What's wrong? What are you doing here?"

His tone is gruff.

Sam seems not to be taken aback by that. She wrings her hands a little, searching for words, coming up blank and finally settling on the unmasked truth.

"I forgot to tell you that I love you."

There is no visible reaction from him.

"I decided I want to stay with you."

Now he looks worried.

"My apartment is not in a good state, Sam."

What did Vivien say? Spell it out?

"I don't care about the state of your apartment. I just want to be with you."

Jack looks stunned.

"I forgot to lock the door," is all he manages to say.

"What door?"

"The door to the hotel room. Nick wouldn't have gotten inside if I had locked it."

"Wait a minute, Jack. What are you talking about?"

"I forgot to lock the door after you let me in," he explains patiently. "It was an old hotel. The doors had handles on both sides. He opened it from the outside."

He sounds like a man who knows he has no chance to escape the death-penalty.

"Is this what it's all about?" she asks, "You think you forgot to lock a door?"

"He would never have gotten inside if I hadn't."

Sam stares at him. She understands that it is just like him to tear himself apart over a detail like that.

"Jack, Sonia told me he took the spare-key from the reception. The night-clerk was asleep. They found the key in the door, Jack."

He looks at her as if he has not heard her words.

"Jack, please. You are not responsible for everything. You locked that door. You thought it was safe."

He draws a very shaky breath, passing a hand over his eyes.

"I should have gotten you out of there."

Sam goes to him and sits down in his lap.

"Well, you did," she says.

His arms go around her drawing her closer. Her face comes to rest against his neck. She can smell him. It is a good smell, deep, very male. She places her lips against his skin, kissing him, moving upward, placing one more. Also a way of spelling something out.

Jack makes a sound deep in his throat.

Then he starts to cry.

Sam feels an ache deep inside. Straightening up she straddles his legs, bringing their bodies into full contact, cradling his head to her chest. He clings to her as if there is no tomorrow. That is one of the things that life has taught Jack Malone – that sometimes, in fact, there is no tomorrow. He feels her touch on the tense muscles in his neck and his shoulders where no one has touched him in more than five years and barely stifles a moan. Then he hears her voice telling him that everything is okay, that everything is fine, that she is here now. Telling him that she loves him. And it is not so much hearing the words but the tone in which they are spoken that tells him that she will never love him despite of what he does and what he is and what he has become, but because of it.

Her body is pressing deeper into his and he feels a desperate response rise in his groin.

It is good that Agatha can’t see them.

 

ooo

Jack is fumbling for the keys with one hand. If someone would ask him in what state of mind he spent the last days he would have described it as a kind of madness, a short-circuit.

He is holding on to Sam's hand. His grip is so hard it has gone numb. Sam does not mind at all.

Finally the door is unlocked and he leads her into his apartment, where nothing has changed since his wife left with most of their belongings five years ago. It is barren, untidy and needs a proper cleaning more than anything else. Jack decides he will get to that first thing in the morning.

"Wow," Sam says, „You've got a lot of packed stuff. Looks like you're about to move."

Jack looks guiltily at the stacks of moving-boxes, taking up a whole corner of the living room.

"My storage area was already filled with my father's stuff and I decided to just put them there."

He bows his head, fiddling with the keys.

"Those are your things, Sam. I wanted to hold on to them in case you came back. I hope you don't mind?"

She is almost moved to tears but does not let him see that.

"So you moved my stuff in here and expected me to stay with Vivien?"

He smiles a bit sheepishly.

"Well, I love what you've done to the place."

"You have never been here before, have you?"

"No."

"I just remembered a dream I had a long time ago. You came to look for me here." He stops and frowns. "It was not a very happy dream."

"How come?"

"Oh," he does not really want to go on but she looks at him, and he remembers the things he heard in the tone of her voice an hour before. She will not judge him.

"In the dream I tried to kiss you, but you started to struggle. I didn't want to let you go, but I had to eventually."

"What happened?"

"I don't remember any more. But I felt horrible. I felt that I had violated you. I held on to you for too long."

"You didn't hold on to me for too long. If you hadn't Nick would have killed me. Probably sooner rather than later. Like he killed Eleanor."

"That is not what I meant," he mumbles, ashamed of himself.

"I'm not responsible for your dreams, Jack. Whatever you dreamt was of your own making."

She looks around.

"Where did that happen?"

"What?"

"The kiss. Where did it happen?"

He points to the sofa. She sits down and looks up at him.

"Okay, now do it one more time."

He hesitates, but she is smiling. So he comes and sits beside her. He puts an arm around her shoulders and sees the complete trust in her eyes.

"I'm sorry about before," he says.

"Hey, I was not part of that dream. No need to be sorry."

"No, not the dream. In the office. I didn't want it to be that way for you. It was sort of frantic."

She moves her body closer to his, cupping his face with her hands.

"I wanted it to be that way for me," she says, her eyes twinkling. "What makes you think I didn't enjoy every moment?"

His relief is so evident she almost laughs out loud.

"It was not exactly romantic," he says.

"What do I need romance for?" she says, not telling him that romance for her is being able to trust him, not being afraid of his touch, not having to flinch away from him anticipating the next hit.

"So, what about the kiss?"

He leans close, covering her lips with his and feels her respond with fervor. She does not struggle to get away from him as she did in his dream. So Jack finally lets go of his fears. He lets himself get swept away.

 

ooo

He awakens in the early morning hours. Their bodies are tangled into each other. He can hardly feel where he leaves off and she begins. Her hair is spread out on the pillow tickling his cheek.

Jack feels deeply at rest.

Her eyes open and she snuggles closer to him.

"One more time?" she whispers.

 

ooo

After one more time it is time for breakfast. Jack goes through the depth of his refrigerator, finally coming up with something that is worthy of her. While the coffee is making its way through the coffee machine he digs in his suit jacket for the little box. He looks at it for a while, leaning against the counter in his cheerless kitchen thinking that this is not the right time. He places it on the tray together with the eggs and the coffee. His heart is beating so hard he almost feels sick.

The sunlight is coming in through the window when he enters the bedroom. Her hair looks golden and there is a glint in her eye. She eases back against the headboard and looks up at him, expectantly. He sits down and places the tray between them.

"Is everything all right, Jack?" she asks, sensing that everything is not.

"Yes."

"You are not regretting anything, are you?"

"Oh god, no."

She checks out the food.

"What is this?"

"Eggs, bread, jam. I didn't have anything else."

She picks up the box.

"Jack…"

He does not speak.

She opens it and looks inside.

"You had no time to think of something like this, let alone buy it," she says quietly.

When he does not answer she asks:

"Was it for someone else?"

She looks into his eyes and finally reads the answer there. Something inside her is sliding in disbelieve.

"For me?" she whispers, "But when did you buy it?"

"Five years ago," he says.

"But you guys say I was with Martin five years ago."

"Yes I know you were. Now. I didn't know then. I think I wouldn't have bought it if I had."

She is out of words.

"I know this is not the right time, Sam. It has just been so long. I had to get this of my chest, kind of. You don't have to take it, of course. I'm sorry."

She offers him her hand.

"I'll take it. You have to put it on."

So he does, in a kind of daze.

She reaches out for him. He is aware enough to put the tray down on the floor before he lets himself get lost in her.

The coffee grows cold. So do the eggs.

 

ooo

Vivien reaches the cabin in the early afternoon. It is Jack's and Sam's last weekend up here before heading back to New York. Jack is due again at the office on Monday. He steps out on the porch when he hears the car and comes down the stairs to greet her.

He is looking good. In fact, he is looking ten years younger than last time she saw him. It seems as if a weight has been lifted from him.

Years later she will ask him what it was that changed things in the aftermath of Sam's return. She sensed that something fundamental had happened. It was not in the way he worked, not in the way he cared, not even in the way he let things get to him – it was in the way he dealt with it afterwards.

He will listen to the question, smiling to himself and not answering for a while. Finally he will say:

"I found out that I did not fail her. I did the right thing by her. Not as before…"

He will stop talking then, tears in his eyes, but Vivien understands. She knows he is not talking about the end of their affair or not being there for her in the time after. Neither is he talking about failing in his marriage or about all the people they did not find over the years. He is talking about his mother.

"Hey, Vivien," he says, hugging her, „I thought Marcus was coming, too."

"He couldn't make it. Work."

She shrugs her shoulders.

"Where's Samantha?"

"She went into town to get a few things. She'll be back, soon."

"Well, I'm glad you manage to let her out of your sight from time to time."

"I'm a wreck until she gets back."

It is meant as a joke but Vivien can see the strain in his eyes.

They settle down on the porch. Shortly after that Danny arrives with his wife and his son, followed by Martin and his newest girlfriend, a cop working homicide with the NYPD.

They decide to go boating on the lake while the sun is still up.

Finally Sam comes back, looking radiant in jeans and a bright red top. She hugs Vivien enthusiastically and orders Jack to take the groceries to the kitchen. He has to settle for a careless pat on the cheek, but Vivien sees their eyes connect and the way they look at each other.

The last to arrive is Agatha, looking out of place in high-heeled shoes and a white suit. She looks around.

"Nice," she says with a tone that implies she is used to better. She follows Sam to the kitchen to help her with the food. There she takes off her sunglasses and fixes Sam with a surprisingly alert stare.

"You are pregnant."

Sam looks at her.

"It's true, isn't it?"

"We've only known for two days."

"Is Jack happy?"

Sam smiles to herself.

"Yeah," she says.

Sam still does not know what to make of Agatha. She is a bit too exalted for her taste, but she knows that Jack likes her. That is good enough for the time being.

Sam turns around, beginning to prepare the salad.

"Those scars are healing really well. You will hardly be able to see them in a couple of months."

Sam's head drops slightly in annoyance. Maybe she should have put on a regular t-shirt after all. She turns to Agatha crossing her hands over her chest.

"You know, Aggie, why don't you go and talk to my husband. I'm sure he will appreciate your comments."

Agatha flinches at the use of her nickname. She puts on the sunglasses.

"Nice ring," she comments, wandering off in search of Jack.

It is a good evening. Sam has not been among so many people for a long time and after a while she feels one of her headaches coming up. She is still not as strong as she would like to be. So she settles down in a lounge chair, watching Danny play ball with his son and Martin, and Agatha taking a stroll along the lake with Danny's wife and Martin's girlfriend. Agatha has discarded her shoes. The hem of her white trousers is getting dirty. She does not seem to mind. Martin told Sam that she is currently talking his father into opening a Cold Case Unit. She might even succeed.

Jack and Vivien are sitting nearby, talking. Sam watches Jack. She loves the way his face moves. He is smiling easily these days.

She fingers the ring he gave her. She thinks about the time when he bought it. A time when she was convinced that everything was over between them. It makes her feel good that he never let her go. Not even then.

 

ooo

A cool breeze from the lake is blowing in through the window, moving the curtains.

Jack pushes the covers down, relishing the cool air on his skin. Sam is starting to moan beside him and he moves closer to her, taking her in his arms without waking her, his hand resting on her stomach where their child is growing, his lips touching the scar on her temple. It is three o'clock in the morning and this is her time for nightmares. She usually sleeps through them. He always wakes up.

After a couple of minutes he feels her relax and her breaths become even again.

Jack is happy. He is also afraid. He knows if anything ever happens to her and the child his life will be over.

He closes his eyes.

He will have to live with it.

THE END

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story in 2005. It is the first thing I ever wrote and at the time I was awfully pleased with it. It was posted on fanfiction.net under the title "Taken". Since I felt that that title is now so overused I decided to rename it. I also fixed a lot of mistakes (English is not my original language and it was much worse back then), obscure phrases that even I didn't understand any more and left out a few sentences that I thought didn't add anything to the story or were inappropriate. Otherwise it is exactly as I wrote it back then. Needless to say there are so many things I would do differently now. I clearly don't know anything about amnesia and I was struck rereading it at how quickly Sam seems to regain her memory and generally recover. She seems so very composed. I don't regret for a moment all the things I did to Jack, though :D. I still think the story works well in terms of angst and I did have fun rereading it. The story is unbetaed.


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